This blog's title is based upon the best question I ever overheard being asked, by a young Liverpudlian child to his mother, as in "What's..?".
The answer seems to be something of a creative and cultural nature which, in deed (primarily the making of art) and word, this blog intends to explore...

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

World Cup '74 Portrait #9 (Bwanga Tshimen: Zaire)

graphite & putty eraser/30x21cm
The latest portrait subject, chosen as usual at random, is Bwanga
Tshimen (or vice versa, as the Panini album from which the sticker image that
provided the original source material, subsequently photocopied to serve as the
immediate visual reference for the drawing, has it: he also featured in the FKS
album) of the Zaire squad, who was selected to appear in all 3 of his team’s
matches at the 1974 World Cup finals, each of which was lost, to the tune of an
aggregate of 0 – 14.Although very few of the protagonists of the 1974 World
Cup can be personally recollected by name (only a modest amount would have
registered at the time, let alone be remembered 40 years on), & none of the
Zaire team are amongstthat number, one
does recall the legendarily infamous free-kick incident, when one member of
their defensive wall (Mwepu Ilunga, as it happened) broke rank to kick away a
ball that had been placed in preparation for their opponents (Brazil) to
address, seemingly as a flagrant instance of indiscipline (to be used as an
example to critically question the development & worth of African football
at the time: Zaire were then only the second nation from the continent to have
qualified for Africa’s recently-allocated designated place amongst the 16
available in the World Cup’s modern era, & were hardly seen as making a
favourable representation, considering not least their preceding 0 -9 defeat to
Yugoslavia) but, it transpires, actually a deliberate act of protest that
unfortunately had not the desired effect (Ilunga had intended to get himself
sent off to make his point, only to be merely cautioned), an intriguing detail
to emerge from the tournament’s history.